


Fiery Beacon

by allihearisradiogaga



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Pokemon Fusion, Friendship, Gen, Pokemon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 15:03:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4750697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allihearisradiogaga/pseuds/allihearisradiogaga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Leon's first day working as a security guard at the Pokemon Lab in Pallet Town, when a mysterious woman in red blows the building up and steals some important files.  While chasing her, he meets Claire, who is searching for Sherry, a girl who just wants to see her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fiery Beacon

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY I just really wanted to see a Pokemon AU with a story that sort of mirrored both the story of Pokemon and the story of Resident Evil (so this one is sort of based off of Red/Blue and Resident Evil 2, respectively), so I decided to make one.
> 
> This is, as of now, a oneshot. I might make more EVENTUALLY, but that's a long way off if it ever does happen. Yeah, thanks for reading!

“Well, that’s really convenient,” said Leon, placing the ball back on his belt, where it and the rest of his team usually rested.  “That you _happened_ to receive your Pokémon on the same day that the Professor lost one…”

“You’d think so,” replied the woman in red, a smirk wide across her face.  “But things are a little bit more complicated than you think.  If I were you, I’d ask the professor about the Eevee project—he might not be quite so willing to share information about that.”

“What?” asked Leon, glancing backward toward town, toward the lab.  When he turned his head back around, she was gone, disappeared into the trees.  For a brief moment, Leon wondered if he should follow her.  Then, he turned back to Pallet Town and started his way back.

* * *

 

“Professor Birkin,” said Leon in greeting as he entered the lab.  The professor looked up from the machine he was leaning over and smiled when he saw Leon.

“Leon!  Did you catch the Skitty thief?” he asked, eyes darting to Leon’s belt, where he kept his pokéballs.

“I was able to catch up with her, but she got away,” he said, not admitting that he had practically let her go.  It was practically his first day on the job as security for the lab—the last thing he needed was to make himself seem any _worse_ in the situation.

“She’s a sneaky one,” said Birkin, turning back to his work.  “At least you know what to look for, now, if and when she comes back around here again.”  He paused for a moment.  “Why she would just steal a Skitty from one of the most prestigious labs in the region, I don’t know.”

The woman in red’s parting words about the Eevee Project, whatever that was, echoed in Leon’s mind.  Perhaps the Skitty wasn’t all that she had come for—or all that she had gotten.  “I—I don’t know, sir.  But I’ll keep on a lookout.”  Professor Birkin mumbled some sort of a response, and Leon stepped out, to the guards’ station, just outside of the main area of the lab.  He leaned back in his chair and he sighed.  Someone had already broken into the lab and stolen something on his watch.  What a first day.

This was when an explosion went off inside of the lab.  Leon was immediately to his feet, and he rushed into the lab, where some chunks of the outer wall were falling inward and fire danced on more than a few of the complicated instruments and machines in the room.  Lab assistants and technicians scrambled for the exit, but Leon pressed into the debris before finding Professor Birkin, who was tapping away at a half-disintegrated computer.

“Professor, the place is on fire, we need to get you out of here!”  Leon tugged at his arm, but the Professor barely even noticed that he was there.  “The building is collapsing, Professor…”

Birkin shut him off by pulling him away from the computer, and getting him running with the same motion.  Behind them, a falling chunk of wall crushed the computer system the Professor had been frantically working at.  After a brief glance back, the pair of them dashed out of the building, escaping before they could be blown or crushed to death in the collapsing lab.

Catching their breaths, Birkin put his hand on Leon’s back.  “You have a few Pokémon of your own, don’t’ you?”  Leon nodded by way of response.

“Yeah,” he said between breaths.  “Yeah, I do.”

“I know it’s your first day,” said Birkin, “but I have a special job for you, if you can handle it…”

* * *

 

The mouth of the forest loomed ahead of him as Leon checked his PokéNav.  He had been out in it before, he had trained his Pokémon before, but he had never gone out on a journey like this.  After a quick stop in Viridian City, where people had asked him if he’d seen the explosion the day before, in this quite part of Kanto, and now he stood at the threshold of the forest.

Leon’s fingers brushed the pokéballs on his belt and felt a rise in his chest.  He was going to find the woman in red, because she had taken data from the Professor’s hard drives that he couldn’t recover himself.  He knew she had fled in this direction, so here he was.  He stepped into the forest with a sigh of relief when nothing jumped out at him.  He knew that Viridian Forest was notorious for hiving bug Pokémon that jumped out at passers-by, even those who stayed on the path.  There were signs all around that warned of the dangers of passing through, recommending that anyone who did carry with them battle-ready Pokémon.

Feeling more confident now after his first step, Leon brushed the hair out of his eyes and looked into the forest, the underbrush speckled with sunlight as it filtered through the trees.  A slight mid-summer breeze rustled some of those leaves, causing the light patterns to dance across the forest floor.

Leon began down the path, keeping his eyes open wide for any chance encounters with any wild Pokémon.  He had trained his Pokémon before, around Pallet Town, where he’d lived for most of his adult life, but he had never faced any feral forest monsters.  He was confident, however, that his team could handle it.

A rustling in the bushes caused Leon’s head to snap to the side.  He didn’t see anything yet, but he didn’t dare move.  He waited for a moment, to see if the thing, whatever it was, that was making the noise would just leave.  This strategy did not pan out, as he was shot in the very next moment in the chest with a stringy, sticky substance, a sort of line that led back to the bushes.  Leon put a hand to it to see if he could pull it off when, as if zipping up along the string, a foot-long worm-like Pokémon launched itself at him from the bushes.  Leon attempted to swat it away, but the string it excreted allowed it to hold fast to him.

With the hand that wasn’t engaged with fighting off the assaulting bug, Leon reached down to his belt and pulled the first pokéball off of it.  He thumbed the release switch, and in a flash of red light, his Pokémon stood before him.  “Growlithe!” shouted Leon.  “Use Ember!”  The canine Pokémon looked confused at first, not having seen his trainer wrestling with a giant worm before.  Then, he opened his mouth and spit a small stream of fire a t the bug.

The worm now realized that its main antagonist was not Leon at all, but his growlithe, and dropped from Leon’s chest to the forest floor, leaving a splotch of gooey string behind.  It leapt at Growlithe, but Leon was free to call the shots now.  “Ember, again!” he commanded his Pokémon, and Growlithe let loose another short burst of flames, knocking the bug backward to the ground.  Growlithe padded over to it and nudged it with his nose, but it had fainted.  He looked op to his trainer.

“Good boy,” said Leon, rubbing his Pokémon behind its ears.  The growlithe panted for a moment, its tongue lolling out of its mouth, its eyes closed in a sort of a grin.  After a moment, Leon stood and, leaving his growlithe out of his pokéball for now, continued on his way through the forest.

* * *

 

It wasn’t until the early evening that Leon made it to Pewter City on the opposite side of the forest.  The city stood against a starry purple sky, growing into a dark stone silhouette.  The buildings here were nearly all made of stone, and seemed to be much older than the buildings in Pallet Town or Viridian.

Leon’s first stop was at the Pokémon Center, where a nurse in uniform was happy to heal his Pokémon, taking the balls from him in a plastic tray, and returning with them a few minutes later.  While checking his trainer card, she said to him, “It looks like it’s your first time here in Pewter.  Have you been to the museum or gym yet?”  Leon told her that he hadn’t, and the nurse smiled.  “Well, most newcomers like to check them out while they’re here—both are in the north part of the town, and they’re worth your time, if you have some to spare.”

“You say most people stop by the gym?” asked Leon.

“Oh, yeah,” said the nurse.  “Brock, the leader there, is very popular.  There’s no trainer who wouldn’t want to at least see him battle, even if they weren’t challenging him themselves.”

“Thanks,” said Leon, gathering his things.  The two exchanged good-byes, and the nurse headed off to help other poke-patients.  As Leon left the Pokémon Center, he lost himself in his thoughts.  The woman in red was no doubt a trainer, by the looks of the way the Skitty, which she had just stolen, had obeyed her command­-perhaps she would have tried to stop by the Gym while passing through the city.  She might have even…

Leon was wrenched out of his thoughts when he and another person collided head-on, knocking both of them to the ground.  A throb hit Leon in the center of his forehead when he sat up too fast.  He could tell by the way that the woman sitting opposite him rubbed her forehead that she also experienced a similar pain.  “Ugh,” said Leon, “are you okay?”

The woman didn’t reply at first, but she slowly got to her feet.  “Fine,” she said, rubbing her head a bit more before brushing herself off.  As Leon stood, she introduced herself.  “I’m Claire, and I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“I can’t say I was, either,” said Leon, holding out a hand.  “The name’s Leon Kennedy.”

“Well, Leon, it _is_ a pleasure, but I’m looking for a little girl.  She’s scared, and…”  She looked down.  “I think she ran out of town, and it’s getting dark.”  She started off, away from him, and Leon started after her.

“You’re looking for a little girl?” he asked.  She nodded, but kept moving.  “I can help you,” he said, “if you tell me what she looks like…”

* * *

 

A half an hour later, they were both calling her name out on Route 3.  “Sherry!” shouted Leon, cupping his hands around his mouth.  Claire had explained that she watched Sherry when her parents were out of town—or rather, she would have, but on her first day, the girl had almost immediately fled when Claire had arrived.  Her mother, who had hired Claire, was a scientist working on an archaeological dig at Mt. Moon, and Claire couldn’t even let her know about the status of her missing child via PokéNav.

It was not long before they had wandered into the tall grass.  A rustling came from Claire’s side, and Leon looked, seeing her tense, her fingers hovering over the pokéball on her belt.  There was an absolute stillness for a moment, before a flash of pink and a high-pitch squeal launched itself at Claire.  The pink ball wasn’t even able to touch Claire before a streak of red and gray knocked it to the ground.  Leon stepped forward to see a fletchinder pinning a jigglypuff to the ground.

“Nice quick attack,” said Leon, and he saw Claire just barely grinning with the edge of her mouth.  The jigglypuff opened its small mouth to cry out or—and Leon dreaded this option—sing, but Claire nodded toward her bird, and a quick peck to the head of the pink Pokémon rendered it unconscious.  Claire quickly returned her Pokémon to its ball and kept moving forward, as if no battle had just taken place.

“That was awe…” started Leon, but he was cut off, as Claire began to shout for Sherry again.  Leon held back his compliment and began to call for the girl as well. Claire carried herself as if she already knew she did something awesome.  She didn’t need his, or anyone’s, affirmation.

* * *

 

The sky as reached full dark by the time they had reached the Pokémon Center at the end of the route.  They had found a few signs of Sherry along Route 3, including a ribbon Claire said matched the sailor uniform Sherry had been wearing, caught on a tree branch.  The two trainers entered the Pokémon Center and presented their balls to the nurse, who took them without comment.  The two of them sat for a moment without speaking before Leon broke the silence.

“The only way she could’ve gone is into the caves of Mount Moon, unless she somehow turned around and slipped past us…”

“You don’t’ have to come with me,” said Claire, looking just over Leon’s shoulder, rather than his eyes.  “You don’t even know Sherry…”

“I’m headed that way anyway,” said Leon.  His mind flashed to the woman in red, and the files she had taken from Professor Birkin.  “I might as well help you out along the way.”

“Alright, trainer Leon, then let’s go!”  Claire stood up abruptly, taking her pokéball from the approaching nurse’s tray without looking.  “She probably went into the caves to find her mother,” she continued as Leon took his pokéballs and thanked the nurse.  “But she doesn’t have any Pokémon, and that cave can be dangerous.”

“Then we’d better find her,” said Leon.  Claire grinned back and they headed out of the Pokémon Center and into the cave.

Their steps echoed off of the damp, solid stone walls, and the air inside was significantly cooler than the outside.

“It’s dark,” said Leon, thumbing the release mechanism on his pokéball.  His growlithe appeared in front of them in a flash of red light.  Knowing that it was dark, the growlithe let a thin layer of flames cover the thick fur on its back as it padded foreword through the cave, casting shadows against the walls.

“Nice trick,” said Claire, and she led them deeper into the cave.  They encountered a few small hordes as they went, but there was nothing too difficult for them until they found their way to one of the lower levels of the cave.  Two tall figures in all black stood around something smaller.    Were they not holding a flashlight each, Leon and Claire would not have been able to see them, even with Growlithe’s light.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” asked Claire, stepping out toward them.  Leon followed close behind.  The two men turned around, and each of them held a snarl on their faces.  From behind them scuttled a little girl, who escaped into the darkness.

“Sherry!” called out Claire, but it was too late—she was gone.

“So she _is_ the Birkin woman’s daughter,” said the man with the face slightly distorted from old scars.  “You to just lost us some prime leverage.”

“Who are you creeps?” asked Leon, his fists clenching involuntarily.  Sherry’s last name was Birkin, just like the Professor’s, which meant—could her mother be his estranged wife?  Leon didn’t know much about the Professor’s personal life, as he had just started to work for him, but a wary lab tech had warned Leon not to mention the Professor’s family while he was getting oriented.  All of this he kept to himself, not wanting his employer to deter Claire from allowing him to help—it seemed like his help was needed.

“We’re a part of Team Umbrella, and our business is life itself!” said the other man in black, who seemed to be significantly younger.  “And you’re going to learn not to interfere with our plans!”

“I’ll bet you we won’t,” said Claire, gritting her teeth and holding her hand, hovering, over her pokéball.  All the while, she kept her eyes on the darkness where Sherry had disappeared.  Leon realized they were coming to an altercation and tensed, ready to command Growlithe into battle.

“Go, Ekans!” shouted one of the Umbrella grunts.

“Get ‘em, Koffing!” shouted the other.  In a couple of flashes of light, the sickly purple colored Pokémon emerged from their balls, standing between Leon and Claire and the Umbrella goons.  The ekans hissed at them, but before the Koffing could make any sort of a move, there was a flash of red light and the Koffing was driven into the ground by Claire’s fletchinder.  Leon, not wanting to waste any more time, turned to Growlithe.

“Bite!” he commanded, and the Pokémon lunged forward, catching the ekans by the neck and wrestling it to the ground.

“C’mon, Ekans, bite back!” shouted the Umbrella grunt, shaking his fist.  “Use poison sting!”    The ekans lunged forward at Growlithe, who disengaged to avoid being bitten.

“Use ember!” shouted Leon, and he watched as the flames on his Pokémon’s back redirected themselves, rippling along before bursting forward, off of Growlithe’s fur and into the face of the ekans, who was charging forward at it.  The ekans fell backward before regathering itself and hissing at Growlithe.

The ekans landed a bite on Growlithe’s neck, but he was able to shake it off.  The ekans took a bit longer to get its bearing this time, much to the annoyance of its trainer, who was shouting a string of commands, half instruction and half profanity, at the Pokémon.

“Let’s try something new,” said Leon, making eye contact with his Pokémon.  The Pokémon gave a little mewl in response, and turned back to the ekans, now back upright.  “Flame charge!” said Leon, grinning as he did.  Growlithe let its fur get covered with soft flames again, and bounded forward at the opposing Pokémon.  Fire spewed from its mouth as it tackled the ekans, pounding it back into the dirt.

“That’s enough!” said Leon, and Growlithe backed off.  The ekans did not move.

“Damn it,” said the Umbrella grunt, retiring his fainted Pokémon back into its pokéball.  Leon patted his growlithe on the head and turned to see Claire’s fletchinder use a wing attack to buffet the Koffing back against the cave wall, rendering it unconscious.  The bird returned to Claire, perching on her shoulder as she and Leon approached the Umbrella goons.

“Where is Annette Birkin?” asked Claire, somehow imposing herself over the taller of the Umbrella grunts, despite being at least a head shorter.

“She’s at the bottom of the caves,” said the smaller grunt from beside her.  Claire turned her attention to him.  “You—you know, where the meteor impact’s crates are visible?  We’ve g-got her research team surrounded.”

“Yeah, you won’t for long,” said Claire, delivering a swift punch to the younger man’s face.  His head snapped backward, and he crumpled to the ground.  Leon hesitated for a moment, and then hauled off and punched the other Umbrella worker.  The punch didn’t knock him off, but Claire hit his knees, knocking him to the ground.  “Get on your radio there,” she said, nodding to his belt, “and tell the others that you’ve seen Sherry running out the Celadon side of the cave.”

The Umbrella grunt sneered up at her, his scarred face ugly in the shadowy light.  His hand went to his belt, where he grabbed for his radio.  One more look at Claire and Leon, and he pressed the button to talk.  “All units?  Two intruders, Pewter side, coming in, I…”

That was as far as he got before Claire punched him in the face, knocking him out this time.  His radio hissed with static as it clattered against the stone floor of the cave.  Leon and Claire made eye contact, and there was a brief moment of silence.  Then: “If we’re not drawing them away, we’d better get moving.”

Claire nodded in agreement, and the two started moving, this time more carefully and deliberately, toward the center of Mount Moon.

* * *

 

For the last bit, Claire and Leon had crawled on their bellies in the near-darkness.  There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and they could hear noises.  As they grew closer, these noises grew into voices.

“…the fossils here.”

“Just because you can blind my hus—my ex-husband, doesn’t mean you can…”

“Team Umbrella has no patience for your family squabbles.  Give us what we’ve come here for.”

“You won’t get them from me.”

“We have you surrounded.”

“You can eat shit.”

“We have your daughter in this cave.”

The voices went silent as Leon and Claire were close enough to look over the edge.  There were two tunnels other than this one that ran into the cave, and there were flashlight beams from within both of them that indicated that there were Umbrella grunts standing guard in them.  In the center of the room stood a woman in a lab coat, who was arguing with a woman in a red dress.

Leon’s eyes wavered and he looked to Claire, who was tense, but did not move.  Sherry was nowhere in sight.

“Sherry’s not here,” said Annette.  “She’s back in Pewter…”

“Or she wanted to chase after her mommy, and is now lost in the cave…”  The woman in red grinned.  “She doesn’t’ have a Pokémon, does she, Annette?  How long do you think she’ll last alone?”

“You’re lying.”

“Do you want to chance that?”

“Where is she, then, did you capture her?”  Dr. Birkin was putting on a front, it was obvious by the way her hands shook and how her eyes darted around the cave.  “Can you prove…”

“You don’t’ need proof,” said the woman in red.  She shrugged.  “And we don’t’ have her.  She’s loose in the cave.  As soon as you give us the fossils, we’ll be on our way.  Then, you can go find your daughter.”

Dr. Birkin did not respond to this.  She stared back at the woman in red for a moment.  Then, she sighed.  “It’s right here.  It’s not fully…”

Her statement was cut off when some shouting erupted from one of the two tunnels that led away from the cave.  The flashlight beams waved around, and then concentrated and grew larger, casting the shadow of a little girl running against the opposite cave wall.  The woman in red turned toward the tunnel, and Annette took her opportunity.  There was a flash of red light, and a jolt of electricity ripped against the woman in red, knocking her back ward and to the ground as Sherry ran into the room, pursued by two Umbrella goons.

This was when Leon and Claire, without even signaling each other, both flung themselves over the edge of the tunnel they were hiding in and ran over to Annette and Sherry, standing between them and the Umbrella grunts.  Annette’s magnemite hovered over the woman in red, glaring at her when she first tried to stand.

The two Umbrella grunts sent out their Pokémon, another ekans and koffing pair.  Claire sent out her fletchinder, but this time Leon switched it up, sending out his aron.  “Headbutt!” called Leon, and the small steel Pokémon launched itself, head-first, at the koffing, knocking it away, spinning.  Claire’s fletchinder didn’t waste any time in performing its quick attack, pushing the ekans back to the floor.  The ekans whipped its tail around, catching the fletchinder as it tried to back away.  Claire gritted her teeth, and Leon called for Aron: “Use metal claws!”  The aron didn’t hesitate, but used its tiny claws, furiously burrowing at the koffing’s face.

“Poison powder!” shouted the Umbrella grunt, and the koffing wheezed outward, releasing a gas of toxic smells, which enveloped both it and Aron.

“What the hell?” gasped Leon, taking a step back.  “We’re in an enclosed space!  What sort of idiot are you?”

“The kind of idiot that is going to get the job done,” said the Umbrella grunt.  The powdery gas had started to dissipate, and Leon’s aron staggered off of the koffing, letting out some sickly wheezes as it did.

“Damn it,” said Leon.  “Aron, return!”  He zapped the Pokémon back into its ball before it could be subjected to any further damage.  “Go, Growlithe, finish him!”  In a red flash, and in one fluid movement, the growlithe exploded into battle, covering itself with flames and launching itself into the purple orb that was the koffing, knocking it into the rock floor and leaving it unconscious.  He turned to the battle going on between Claire’s fletchinder and the ekans, which had come to a strange sort of a standstill, the bird Pokémon hovering a little off of the ground, and the snake glaring at it.

Then, in what seemed to be an instantaneous moment, Fletchinder used peck and Ekans used bite, the two of them colliding head-on.  The two Pokémon recoiled, all of the trainers looking on in anticipation.  Ekans fell to the ground first, hitting it with a thud, its eyes closing as it did.  Claire stepped forward and caught Fletchinder as it fell, her eyes meeting its eyes.  Eyes that were open, and conscious.  The bird struggled its way upward, looking down at the other, unconscious Pokémon.  Claire grinned, and she and Leon turned to their opponents.

“You had all best get the _hell_ out of here,” said Claire.  “Before you end up like those Pokémon of yours.”

“You haven’t seen the last of us,” said one of the Umbrella grunts, as he returned his fainted Pokémon to its ball.  “I promise you that—you think this is over, but this is just the beginning.”

“I’ll take you all out if I have to,” said Claire.  “And that’s a God damn promise.”  The grunts cast one more look back at them before running down the tunnel toward the other flashlight beams.  It was not long before those disappeared, as well.  Leon and Claire turned back to the other three people in the cavern.  The woman in red was pinned down by the magnemite still, and Sherry clung to her mother’s leg.

“Claire,” said Annette, “we are going to have words later about _this_ ,” she gestured to the child clinging to her leg.  “For now, though, we deal with this presumptuous _bitch_.”

“Well,” said the woman in red, “I promise you that I’m thankful you’ve gotten rid of those Umbrella idiots, to start with.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Leon.  “Aren’t you working with them?  That’s why you stole those files from Birkin’s lab!”

“You’ve been to my lab?” asked Annette, glaring at the woman.

“No, your husband’s,” said the woman, “and I can tell you that he’s holding back some more secrets than you had originally presumed.”

“And you’re going to give me back those files,” said Leon.  “I don’t care if you’re working for Umbrella, or yourself, or whoever—they don’t belong to you.”

“I’m wondering if you ever _did_ find out about the Eevee experiments?” said the woman in red.  “I can’t assume so, since you’re being so _righteous_ right now.”  She reached into a pocket and tossed a flash drive across the ground.  “You’ve got some reading to do.”

“Do you know her?” Annette asked Leon.

“She stole from your husband.”

“You work for William?  Damn that man…”

“I don’t think you’ll be in much more need of me,” said the woman on the ground.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me…  Shuppet, use night shade.”

The ghost Pokémon came into view directly behind Dr. Birkin’s magnemite, and from it came a darkness that flashed outward, obscuring Leon’s vision momentarily.  The magnemite dropped from where it was hovering to the ground, and after he blinked a few times, Leon caught a flash of red as it disappeared down the tunnel the Umbrella grunts had not gone down.  He sprinted down after it without hesitating.

“Wait!” he called.  “Wait, I need to…”

He was knocked down onto his back with a swipe of a leg.  The woman had crouched in the shadows and waited for him to come closer before taking him down.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Who _are_ you?”

“My name is Ada Wong,” she said, grinning.  “And Mr. Kennedy, I have a feeling that we’ll be meeting again.”  She crouched down, and kissed him on the cheek.  “I think you’ll understand more about everything soon, but I promise you that Professor Birkin is not who you think he is.  He’s—well, to put it lightly, he’s a monster.”

“What does that mean, Ada…”

“I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”

“Ada, wait…!”  It was no use.  She was gone.  Leon got to his feet slowly, feeling on his cheek where she had kissed him and wondering what could actually be on that flash drive, what was in those files that had caused all of that fuss.  He knew that it wasn’t his place, as an employee of Professor Birkin, to be fiddling in internal matters, but there was something there.

His growlithe bounded up to him, a faint glow coming from its fur.  “Hey, bud,” Leon said, ruffling the fur on its head.  “Let’s go back and help those people out of this cave.”  They started walking back together, but he couldn’t get his head away from Umbrella, Birkin, Ada, and project Eevee.  For now, though, he had Claire and Annette and Sherry, and they needed to get out.

“Help me with these fossils,” said Annette to Claire as Leon rejoined them.  Claire placed a fist-sized rock into her pack.  Annette handed one to Leon.  “Hold onto this,” she said.  “Someone has to.  God knows what Umbrella would do with them.  And I’m keeping an eye on my daughter.”

“I’m sorry about all of this, ma’am,” said Leon.

“You’re just trying to help,” she said, “and I’m glad you both were here.  It’s quicker to Cerulean from here anyway, so let’s go.  Sherry here needs some rest.”  She picked the girl up and carried her, piggy back style.  “Most of my research team fled when Team Umbrella showed up, anyway.”

“Who are they?” asked Claire.

“They’re bad news,” said Dr. Birkin.  “Especially if they are already this active.  Their plans are going on ahead of schedule.  But we’ve won today.”

“Let’s go,” said Claire.  Dr. Birkin led the way out of the cave.  Before they exited the cavern, Leon scanned the room one more time, having the uncanny sense that someone was watching them, but not spotting anyone at all.  As they moved out of the cave, a scarred face slipped back into the darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks to impalallama for the help with Claire's pokemon!
> 
> If you were wondering, Fletchinder is Claire's only pokemon. Leon has a growlithe, an aron, and a scraggy. Ada has a shuppet and the skitty she stole from Birkin's lab. Annette has her magnemite and that's it.
> 
> That scarred grunt is supposed to be HUNK, and will be returning if I ever make more of this dang thing. Please let me know what you think of all of this, I greatly appreciate anything--I really enjoyed writing this, so thanks for reading!


End file.
